Toni Negri

Toni Negri (1 August 1933-) was an Italian Marxist philosopher who founded the Potere Operaio group in 1969 and became a leading member of Autonomia Operaia during the "Years of Lead".

Biography
Antonio Negri was born in Padua, Italy in 1933, and he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university. Negri founded the Potere Operaio group in 1969, and became a leading member of the Autonomia Operaia group. During the "Years of Lead" in the 1970s, Negri was accused of being the mastermind of the left-wing guerrilla organization Red Brigades, which was involved in the 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Christian Democracy prime minister Aldo Moro. He was sentenced for involvement in two murders, but he fled to France, where he continued to work as a teacher, being protected from extradition by Francois Mitterrand's non-extradition doctrine. In 1997, after a plea-bargain that reduced his prison sentence from 30 to 13 years, he returned to Italy to serve the rest of his sentence. Many of his influential books were published while he was in prison, and he lived in Venice and Paris after leaving prison.